Kaleidoscope
by canadianreaders
Summary: She supposed this was what the world looked like when you died. Like it was about to vomit. Or maybe it was the spell, that awful green light, so close to the colour of her eyes - of Harry's eyes - maybe that had caused this change in colour. An au in which Lily lives through October 31st.


**A/N: In honour of the saddest day of the year.**

Everything looked purple. Like someone had thrown dark violet paint on the world and it just would not come off. It was a sickly kind of purple. Like the feeling-you-get-right-before-you-vomit kind of purple. It was ugly and demanding and it had stained her entire universe.

She supposed this was what the world looked like when you died. Like it was about to vomit. Or maybe it was the spell, that awful green light, so close to the colour of her eyes - of _Harry's_ eyes - maybe that had caused this change in colour. It was that that had changed everything else. Maybe that flash had somehow twisted the spectrum of the world, messed up the colour wheel. Or maybe -

Or maybe it was just the beginnings of the sunrise creeping through the window. Maybe the purple wasn't as harsh as she first thought, but softer. Maybe it was not sickly but welcoming.

* * *

There was a pain in her shoulder. Like someone had pressed a cigarette butt into the point where her shoulder met her collarbone and it just kept burning.

She did not understand. She had seen the light, had stood in front of her son, how was she now feeling this pain? How was she now seeing the same room she'd been in before, the early morning sunlight bathing the walls in lilac? And then she noticed the screaming.

It sounded an awful lot like Harry.

Her world twisted to the side when she stood up, her hands pressing into her knees as she tried to see straight. There were pictures on the walls, pictures of her, of James, they kept spinning in and out of focus. A cacophony of red, and gold and something that looked like joy.

She turned towards the screaming, and there was her little boy, the purple light splitting through his hair, kissing the side of his face. She picked him up, her hands shaking. His wails quieted as she bounced him around the room. Her vision was still slinking around like it was dancing and her shoulder still burned and the purple was still there, clinging to the photographs of them, and she would have said she was dead if it weren't for the boy in her arms. Because he felt real. Because in no sick, about-to-vomit world did her little boy meet his end.

So she began to hum. His favourite song that James used to sing. She could not think about him. About the silence that was sneaking around the rest of their little house. She did not dare to go downstairs. She stayed in that little room, clinging to Harry and to the light that turned from purple to pink to red. A slip and slide of colours, fading into each other, drifting together and apart. Nothing could touch them there, not in that room.

She did not go downstairs. Not until she heard the footsteps. The voice. The words that crashed in her ears, that made her stop thinking about colours and light and what it would feel like to be dead.

She opened the door, barrelled down the stairs. And then stopped.

Her whole world spun backwards. The light died. The stars broke. The earth dropped out from beneath her feet.

He was eleven when she first saw him on the train. He was smiling and his eyes held galaxies and his hair was a collection of undecided strands. Time itself seemed to bend around him.

And here, ten measly years later, he was staring up at her. Eyes glassy, time standing still.

She sobbed. The sound quaked. She knew that Sirius was standing across the room, but she could not take her eyes off of him. Her _person._ Who had kissed her when she was angry and held her when she cried. She sunk to her knees. She set Harry down next to her. James. _James._ Is this the price she was to pay for her life? The trade she didn't get a say in making? She wanted to take it back, to switch places, anything so that the world wouldn't lose the boy who burned the brightest of them all, who laughed like it was only thing keeping him alive.

She pushed back his hair, grabbed his hand, begging him to laugh. Just one more time.

The air stayed quiet. The seconds started to tick again. She thought she may be screaming. Because suddenly Sirius was there, pulling her away and her tears dripped into his hair and his into hers as they held each other.

There was golden light flicking through the windows when they pulled apart. Lily picked up Harry, his eyes glued to his dad. She told him it will be alright. She didn't know when she became a liar.

"What happened?"

Sirius's voice croaked, his gaze clinging on James' glasses that were laying on the floor, smashed to pieces. Lily did not have the words to explain. She didn't even know what the answer was.

She told him about the creak in the front gate, the way James had looked when he saw who was coming. Like a warrior ready to fight - to die. She did not get to kiss him goodbye. She tells him about the thud, then the footsteps up the stairs, the green light, and then the purple. Harry's crying. The singeing feeling in her shoulder.

Sirius slowly reached forward, pushing aside her shirt to reveal a lightning-shaped scar where her pain was. Lily reached up, tracing her fingers over the mark, the death that seemed to cling to it like black dust on her skin.

She could see the words in Sirius' eyes, could hear them ringing in her ears. _You should be dead._ It felt like something was sitting on her chest, like there wasn't enough air in the room. The ceiling was too close, like the roof of their house was collapsing under the weight of the dense death in the air.

"We have to go, Lily."

"No, _no-"_

"I'll-I'll carry him. But we can't stay here. Peter... Peter may come back. And it's only a matter of minutes before the muggles notice. We have to find Dumbledore."

She picked up Harry. Sirius picked up James. He looked like a rag doll, lying there limp in his brother's arms. She could not make herself grab his hand, not when she knew the cold she would find there, when she could see the purple of his veins through his too-pale skin. Harry begun to cry again.

The world kept fidgeting in and out of her vision. The daisy painted teapot that sat next to the stove, water still in it from earlier, the big red couch that James had loved because it matched her hair, and she had hated for the same reason, the photo of the five on them on James and Lily's wedding day that still sat untouched on the mantle, a half-written letter to Remus on the kitchen counter. A kaleidoscope of their broken life.

She picked up James' wand from the couch and her own from the coffee table, before grabbing onto Sirius' arm, and letting him apparate them away from her home. Her prison cell, her salvation, their little world on the edge of the planet, and in the span of a second it was gone.

She was in the Order's headquarters. At least that's what she assumed. They had moved since the last time she'd been to a meeting. Every head in the room snapped to them. People she knew, people she didn't, they all stared at her with shocked eyes. She could see Mary Macdonald across the room, her best friend since she was eleven. Who she hadn't seen in over a year. Lily swallowed her sob.

Mary rushed towards them.

Sirius' choked word - " _Dumbledore" -_ sounded far away from her. The only thing she could hear was the thumping of her heart in her throat, her strangled breaths.

Mary lead them down a hallway. Sirius peeled off about halfway down, and Lily almost yelled at him, yelled at him to _come back, don't take James,_ but Mary grabbed her hand.

"Lily."

There were a thousand questions in that word. She just shook her head.

Mary squeezed her hand once and looked at her with love and pity and continued down the hallway. Eventually they made it to an office. Dumbledore sat behind the large desk at the far side of the room, staring out the window. He nodded at Mary and she left the room. Lily just stood there, a sleeping Harry in her arms.

"Ms. Potter, can you tell me what happened last night?"

Lily told him what she could. It was fuzzy and painful and it didn't make any sense, but it was all she had to give. When he asked who their secret keeper was, she uttered Peter's name, the word was small, meek, but it still felt like a knife in her chest.

Sirius came in just as Dumbledore was explaining what he thought happened. How James saved them with his love, and how Lily had killed Voldemort. Lily shuddered out a sob. He gave himself up, had given up everything, for her, for Harry. He hadn't even hesitated. It wasn't fair, it wasn't even close to fair. This war had already taken so much, did it really need him too?

"Where is he?"

Lily's voice was flat, cold. She did not care that Dumbledore had more questions, she probably couldn't answer them anyways. All she cared about was James.

"I'll show you."

Sirius lead her back out into the hallway. She could see his hands shaking at his sides from where he walked ahead of her. She could hear people speaking ahead, back in the main room, but thankfully that wasn't where they were headed. They went up a set of stairs, and then Sirius stopped in front of a white door. She handed Harry to him.

"I'll be out here if you need me."

Lily slowly entered the room. There was nothing in there but a stiff cot, and on it laid James. She made her feet walk closer, every step a battle. She stood over him, just staring. She wanted to say something, anything, but she knew he couldn't hear her. And besides, he knew how she felt. He'd always known.

She gripped his hand, his ice cold hand. And she had never believed in heaven, but in that moment she wished and hoped that she was wrong because she needed him to be safe somewhere. To be happy. To be okay.

"I love you."

She kissed his cheek, her silent tears now on his skin. Time seemed to crack in two as she stared down at his closed eyes, those eyes that she would never see again. She let go of his hand. Her heart cleaved. And she had fought on battle fields and written 5 N.E. in one week and endured childbirth and watched her friends killed in front of her, but walking out of that room was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

She didn't know what to do next. How she would go on. The world seemed broken and flipped, and even though Voldemort was gone, she did not feel safe. Not without James. But somehow, somehow, she would continue. The purple light would crack through the windows and a new day would begin. A new world would begin.


End file.
